On 6 June this year, President Ramaphosa met with chief executives of over 20 key state-owned companies, SOCs, at the Union Buildings to discuss the contribution they can make to economic revitalisation and social development.
The President acknowledged that several entities were facing severe financial and operational challenges that pose great risks to the South African economy. In the end, the meeting recognised that SOCs have considerable resources and capabilities that if better co-ordinated and managed, could have a far greater impact on economic growth and job creation.
However, the challenges they face range from inadequate capitalisation and poor governance to outdated legislation and political interference. The ANC government is committed to work with the leadership of these SOCs to urgently address these difficulties. The decisions of the meeting with the President have formed part of the Presidential SOCs Council established to provide political oversight and strategic management to reposition and revitalise the SOCs as catalysts to economic growth and development.
While SAA found itself in dire straits on the brink of collapse needing cash injection of R2 billion to keep its operations going, the two majority unions served the company with a strike notice. It is worth noting that five other unions in the company did not strike. By the way, the strike had nothing to do with the wage increase but more to do with populist politics and demagoguery by both Solidarity and Numsa which are two sides of the same coin with an agenda to destabilise our economy and the state under the ANC government.
The call by the DA to privatise SAA and other SOCs is not a panacea to all their problems. In fact, that dogmatic call forgets the inconvenient fact that those who corrupt public sector employees and public representatives are business people who want to get an unfair advantage on their competitors. However, while the ANC supports the efforts by the government to sustain strategic SOCs through appropriating money from the National Revenue Fund, a number of moral questions do arise.
Firstly, should public funds be used to continuously sustain an airline which is used primarily by the bourgeois class and middle strata? Should not this money be channelled to fund the transport sectors used by the overwhelming majority of our people, trains, buses and taxis? The answer for me is pretty simple a big no.
We may not always agree with the Finance Minister, but the recapitalisation of these SOCs that continue to have bloated executives with layers of managers with executive perks; managers who award worth dodgy contracts is morally very difficult to justify. The government must seek to find partners with aviation expertise to buy
equity in SAA so that it can continue to fly the South African flag. We cannot continue subsidising the rich.
While we respect the ideological purity of some who claim they are opposed to strategic equity partnerships as a matter of principle; we know that some of them, such as the VBS cabal, advocate reckless appropriation of public funds to keep SAA and the other SOCs purely out of self- interest. They know it is easier for them to loot the public sector companies than entities that are part- privately owned, such as Telkom.
We know they will launch personalised attacks through their Twitter fake accounts against the Minister of Public Enterprises because to them, stealing and laundering the savings of elderly rural gogos to fund their lavish lifestyles is okay. [Applause.] With our mothers and grandmothers money, they have bought luxury cars and houses among the rich and well fed - the very same white capital they claim to hate so much.
The government needs to urgently better definition of the respective mandates of state-owned companies and align
policy to more effectively support their achievement. The legal and regulatory environment within which SOCs operate, which are often ill- suited to the specific needs of entities and constrain innovation must be updated. The exercise by government shareholder representatives of their oversight responsibility and inconsistency in the appointment of boards must be improved.
There have been many turnaround strategies at SAA that have met with limited success due to factors such as mismanagement, state capture, incorrect fleet configuration, discontinuity and disruptions at leadership levels and the erosion of skills.
The ANC supports the recommendations in various forensic reports that are being implemented, with some being handed to the Hawks for criminal investigation, and also at the National Prosecuting Authority for evaluation of evidence. As a result of this work, some employees suspected of involvement in wrongdoing have been subjected to internal disciplinary hearings.
As expressed in King Code IV, there is a greater need now, more than ever for leaders who carry the values of ethical leadership and effective leadership and those dialectically reinforcing one another.
In conclusion Deputy Speaker, as the ANC, we want to express our confidence in the Minister of Public Enterprises, Comrade Pravin Gordhan. The unwarranted attacks, even from within our movement, should not deter him from carrying out the responsibilities of his office by the President and the majority of the people of South Africa.
The ANC condemns in the strongest possible terms the ethnic chauvinism that rears its head from time to time. The ANC affirms its nonracial, nonsexist character which was built with sweat and blood by generations of outstanding leaders of our movement such as OR Tambo, Albert Luthuli, Yusuf Dadoo, Ruth First, Sophie de Bruyn, Bertha Gxowa, Joe Slovo, and many others. Nonracialism is a foundational principle of the ANC and the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa.
There is no transformation policy in the ANC that says white South Africans must never be appointed to senior public sector positions. We are the ANC of Freedom Charter, which says that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white. I thank you. [Applause.]
IsiZulu:
Sihlalo, ngiyabonga kakhulu ukuthi usangibona namanje, kade ngagcina ukusebenza nawe.
English: